Why Build A Playhouse?

Playhouse Benefits

Creating a backyard playhouse for your child can become an important part of their childhood. Your child will develop some great memories and get a very special area to share with friends, but it can also benefit the rest of the family! A playhouse that is separate from the house can give you plenty of quiet time while your child plays, while help keeping your house cleaner. A playhouse provides a contained play area where your child can keep some of their toys, keeping the common areas in your home free of children’s toys. A playhouse provides many benefits to children that we discuss below.

 

What Playhouses Give Children

Children these days spend so much time indoors; behind a desk, in front of a TV, on a computer, or doing screen time on a mobile device. Past generations used to play games outside till right before dinner instead of sitting inside so much.

Unsupervised kid time is important for teaching children how to get along, how to use their imagination, and how to use their problem-solving skills. Make-believe teaches children so much; it hones their storytelling skills which can translate into better writing skills, it gets them thinking outside of the box, and it lets kids be kids.

Kids love playing house, reenacting vacation places, role-playing their parent’s jobs, and playing school, hospital, vet, grocery store, and lawyer, just to name a few. Playing these different roles has so much to teach our kids; including helping them to work through challenges that they can enact in a safe mode to see what works for them. Also playing these roles lets them try on a career choice seeing if there is interest for them. Remembering back to your own childhood you can probably remember some of the games you used to play in make-believe with your friends. Everything from Monster Under the Bed to New Baby as ways of working through your fears to getting ready for the new sibling in the family.

Children playing away from adults allow them to be kids but it also lets them learn to become adults by inventing rules, working through change in their lives, creating their own rules, learning to deal with fear, jealousy, anger, sadness, and love by enacting games and roles that help them work through these emotions in real-time.

Making Your Child’s Playhouse Fit Their Age

Play structures and playhouses can be built for a very young child of 2, to a playhouse that still has a purpose nearly into their teen years. A playhouse can also be added to as time goes on and your children grow up. When children are very young you want to be able to see their activity at all times, so a simple sandbox or mud table is great fun. Adding a bucket swing to your playhouse structure is great for children 9 months to 4 years. Older toddlers really love repetitive motion, they find it soothing and fun!

Climbing tires, repurposing truck tires, and painting them are great on a soft surface for crawling, climbing, and playing make-believe. A playhouse without a door installed that is single story is great for the 3-5-year-old set and as your child grows to be a 6-year-old and up you can add a door. Giving your children an old sink outside their playhouse can provide all sorts of fun and games.

As your child grows up the complexity of the playhouse can grow with them; with seating, lighting, a skylight, window seat, rugs and so much more. By the time a child is 7, they can help design their playhouse, and if it is a project for an older child of 9 or 10 they can help build their playhouse or fort. Participating in the planning and building is actually part of the fun. Into their teen years, it can be a place to study, hang out with friends, and have space from the little kids in the family.

Build A Playhouse or Play Structure?

Playhouses, especially wood ones have a longer life span for children than a play structure usually has. If you have multiple children in your family and will have 2 or 3 growing up through the years, a play structure can make sense. We’ve learned from experience that with a play structure or playhouse, it’s best, especially with young children to position it close to your home and not a half acre away; kids like to have their space but they also like to know that Mom and Dad are close by. So use your imagination with water walls, climbing walls, swings, rope swings, and towers to create the play structure of their dreams.

Build A Playhouse That Can Be Repurposed

Playhouses designed properly can easily be repurposed into a backyard shed, guest shed, tool shed, or chicken coop after the kids grow up. If you have built a simple wood frame playhouse with a standard 8-foot wall height, it is simple to convert it at a later date to be a shed that fits other needs. Add a tool bench and you have a tool shed, put in shelves for laying baskets and more ventilation and you have a chicken coop, add upscale flooring and lighting and you have a guest shed.

With repurposing a playhouse in mind you also build a playhouse that will span the years instead of your children outgrowing their playhouse by the time they are 8 years old and have hit a growth spurt physically and with changes in their play choices.. So building with repurposing in mind gives you many added benefits to building a playhouse for your children.

You can count on Shed Windows and More for everything from windows to shutters, to flower boxes to door hinges to pull together a look that will have your child’s playhouse looking its very best.